How can this be proven to kill us?

Movement is life…that is all

Then people in wheelchairs would be dropping like flies .

Maybe most people in wheelchairs don’t have a long life ahead of them?

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20140407/sitting-disease-faq

They do die early. Think Derrick Thomas or Christopher Reed.

Certainly when driving great distances, older people get blood clots in their legs.

As someone who works for a varicose vein treatment center I can say with a lot of confidence that your calf muscles are basically the counterpart to the heart. The heart pumps “clean” blood to your whole body. Your calves pump the “dirty” blood full of cell waste and CO2 back to the heart so it can be filtered and supplied with oxygen. Standing still for long periods and sitting for long periods (e.g. on a long airplane flight) prevents your calves from doing their jobs and circulating your blood properly.

This can result in Deep Vein Thrombosis (aka DVT). DVTs are very nasty and can produce lifelong problems like post thrombotic syndrome which results in crippling venous stasis ulcers around the ankle. DVTs can also break loose and travel to the lung and cause a pulmonary embolism which has a very high mortality rate. So sitting still or standing still for excessive periods without flexing your calf pumps can quite literally kill you. It’s nothing to be super anxious about, but it’s always a good idea to walk around every once in a while to keep things moving.

For what it’s worth – while he may on occasion be basically right about something Dr. Mercola is a quack and a snake oil merchant, and you probably shouldn’t put too much stock into what he says.

There are statistics on these sort of things. You might be interested in the book Real Age. The authors have a website too. For instance there are stats on how much exercise adds years into your life and how much shortens it. It’s all averages, and some of the information could be argued to be correlations and not proven to be causation, but it’s still interesting. Too much exercise by the way actually shortens life. Again, it’s averages, and can’t be a predictor for a particular individual.

People who sit all day probably do tend to have more health problems and die younger. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. There was a very old study about the health of mail carriers and that the ones who had routes with lots of walking overall were healthier than their counterparts in mail trucks.

I would think people in wheelchairs probably do have shorter lives on average. I know there is some stat on leg amputees also. Double amputation above the knee predicts a much shorter life than below the knee. I think it has something to do with circulation and the heart. I don’t really know all the medical reasons.

Mercola is very controversial. I agree with him on many things, but I also think anything he says should not be taken as the gospel. Do more research on your own. He is very extreme and often is contrary to the medical establishment. I often am disgusted with the medical establishment, but I try to look at research and also specifically what happens with my own body.

I try to make sure I don’t sit more than two hours without getting up. When I travel I take an aspirin and still try to follow the two hour rule.

I just realized I didn’t really answer your question directly. The way they prove it is follow a large random sample of people who sit for long hours, and another group who doesn’t and see what happens.

They also study the habits of people who make it to very old ages.

I don’t this this particular ‘Dr’ lets facts get in the way of his ideas or marketing strategies. If it walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, he is most certainly a Quack.